Today is Thursday; 8th of the Iranian month of Farvardin 1398 solar hijri; corresponding to 21st of the Islamic month of Rajab 1440 lunar hijri; and March 28, 2019, of the Christian Gregorian Calendar.

1192 lunar years ago, on this day in 248 AH, the scholar Abu Hatem Sahl ibn Mohammad Sijistani passed away. An expert in Qur’anic sciences, hadith, literary techniques and poetry, he was also involved in social affairs as well. Books authored by him include “Akhlaq al-Insan”, and “E’raab al-Qur’an”.

805 lunar years ago, on this day in 635AH, Sultan Abul-Ma'ali Mohammad al-Ayyubi, known as al-Malik al-Kamel, the 5^th ruler of the Ayyubid Kurdish dynasty of Egypt, died after twenty years of rule. Son and successor Salah od-Din Ayyubi’s brother, Sultan al-Adel, he defeated two invasions by the European Crusaders – the 5th and 6th Crusades. His most ignominious act was handing over of the Islamic city of Bayt al-Moqaddas, Bethlehem and some other parts of Palestine to Fredrick Barbarossa of Germany, an act that infuriated the Muslims.

641 lunar years ago, on this day in 799 AH, Mahmud I, the 5^th king of the Bahmani kingdom of Iranian origin of the Deccan (southern India) died in his capital Gulbarga after a reign of 19 years. His 17-year old son Ghiyas od-Din succeeded him as Tahmatan Shah, but two months later was blinded and imprisoned by the Turkish slave Tughalchin Khan, who placed the younger brother, Shams od-Din on the Turquoise Throne. Five months later, Tughalchin and his puppet were deposed by Mahmud Shah’s cousin Taj od-Din Firouz Shah, the greatest ruler of the dynasty who reigned for 25 years, assisted by the able Iranian vizier, Mir Fazlollah Inju of Shiraz. The Bahmanis patronized and promoted Persian language and poetry, as well as Iranian art, culture, and architecture by inviting from Iran thousands of qualified persons in various fields. The famous Iranian poet Hafez Shirazi was also invited, but changed his mind midway through the journey, sending an excellent piece of poetry to the Bahmani court. The famous Gnostic of Kerman, Shah Ne’matollah Wali, was also requested to come to the Deccan, and instead sent his grandson – and later son – who preached in the Bahmani kingdom the teachings of the Ahl al-Bayt or Blessed Household of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA).

463 solar years ago, on this day in 1556 AD, corresponding to 963 AH, the Fasli Solar Hijri Calendar was adopted in India by Moghal Emperor, Mohammad Jalal od-Din Akbar on the basis of the Iranian solar hijri calendar that starts with Nowrouz or the Spring Equinox, and is dated according to the auspicious migration from Mecca to Medina, of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA). Fasli which means harvest is derived from the Arabic term for ‘section’, which in India was applied to grouping of seasons. Fasli Calendar was introduced basically for land revenue and records. Akbar’s grandson, Shah Jahan, introduced it in 1630 AD to the Deccan or South India. This calendar, which follows all the 12 Iranian months of Farvardin, Ordibehesht, Khordad etc, was continued as official calendar of the Asef Jahi Dynasty of Hyderabad State, until its annexation to India in 1948. Even after annexation, the last Muslim ruler, Osman Ali Khan Asef Jah VII, who died in 1967, used to follow the Fasli Calendar in his official transactions and records in both Persian and Urdu. Currently the governments of the states of Andhra, Telengana, Karnataka and Tamilnadu still follow the Fasli solar hijri year, as per its 12 Iranian months, for revenue and judiciary purposes.

435 solar years ago, on this day in 1584 AD, Ivan the Terrible, the first Tsar of Russia, died at the age of 54. He was Grand Prince Ivan IV of Moscow from 1533 to 1547, in which year he crowned himself the Tsar of Russia – the first Russian ruler to assume the title. He launched brutal attacks to conquer the Muslim Khanates of Kazan, Astrakhan, and later Siberia, to transform Christian Russia into a multiethnic and multi-confessional state. In 1552 AD, Kazan, the capital of Tataristan, was occupied after a long siege by Ivan the Terrible, who massacred as many as 110,000 Tartar Muslims, and forcibly converted to Christianity many others, after destroying mosques or turning them into churches. His anti-Muslim policies brought retaliation from a joint army of Crimean Tatars and Ottoman Turks that attacked Moscow in 1571 and set it on fire, resulting in 80,000 casualties. The next year, Ivan the Terrible managed to defeat another Tatar-Ottoman invasion around Moscow in the Battle of Molodi. He then turned attention to the region beyond the Ural mountains in the east, and through military expeditions, treachery and deceit, took control of the vast land of Siberia that was ruled by Muslim khans, eventually styling himself Tsar of Siberia in 1580. In a fit of rage in 1581, Ivan the Terrible killed his own son Prince Ivan.

282 solar years ago, on this day in 1737 AD, Maratha marauders under Baji Rao in a surprise attack managed to defeat a hastily arranged small Moghal force under Mir Hassan Koka at Talkatora on the outskirts of the Indian capital in what is known as the Battle of Delhi, but retreated on fear of the approach of the main Moghal army led by Mohammad Amin Musavi Sa’adat Ali Khan, the general of Iranian origin, who had defeated the Marathas a few months earlier near Agra.

165 solar years ago, on this day in 1854 AD, during the crisis in Crimea, France and Britain declared war on Russia in support of the Ottoman Turkish Empire. The allied forces inflicted a crushing defeat on the Russian army in the Battle of Chernaya River, also known as Battle of Traktir Bridge, in which Russia lost seven thousand soldiers. The Crimean War is sometimes considered to be one of the first modern wars as it introduced technical changes which affected the future course of warfare, including the first tactical use of railways and the telegraph. It is also famous for the work of Florence Nightingale, who pioneered modern nursing practices while caring for wounded British soldiers. The Crimean War was one of the first wars to be documented extensively in written reports and photographs: notably by Roger Fenton and also by William Russell for The Times newspaper of London. For the first time the public in Britain was thus kept informed of the day-to-day realities of war.

151 solar years ago, on this day in 1868 AD, famous Russian author and political activist, Alexei Maximovich Peshkov, known by his penname Maxim Gorky (“Bitter Advice” in Russian), was born in Nizhny Novgorod. The abysmal poverty of his family, forced him to work during his studies. He started writing stories in his youth, and while working at railway workshop at Tbilisi, Georgia, his first story was published in the newspaper. His stories brought him money and fame. He focused on the miserable life of the Russian people and sought solutions to social problems. The brutal shooting of workers marching to the Tsar with a petition for reform on 9 January 1905 (known as the "Bloody Sunday"), which set in motion the abortive Revolution of 1905, made Gorky associate with Vladimir Lenin and Alexander Bogdanov's Bolshevik wing of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. He wrote the play “Children of the Sun”, nominally set during an 1862 cholera epidemic, but universally understood to relate to contemporary events. He next wrote the famous book “Mother”, in admiration of the struggles of Russian workers and as a result had to leave Russia in 1906. He lived in exile, mostly on the Italian island of Capri until an amnesty granted in 1913 on the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty allowed him to return to Russia, where he continued his social criticism. During World War I and the revolutionary period of 1917, his apartment turned into Bolshevik staff headquarters. These relations became strained after his newspaper “Novaya Zhizn” was subjected to Bolshevik censorship during the ensuing civil war. In 1918, Gorky published a collection of essays critical of the Bolsheviks called “Untimely Thoughts”. The essays call Lenin a tyrant for his senseless arrests and repression of free discourse, and an anarchist for his conspiratorial tactics. Gorky compared Lenin to the Tsar. He termed Lenin "a cold-blooded trickster who spares neither the honour nor the life of the proletariat." He was exiled and spent the period from 1921 to 1928 living abroad, mostly in Sorrento, Italy, where he wrote several successful books. On the personal invitation of Joseph Stalin, he returned to the Soviet Union in 1932, and for a while was officially feted by the dictator for propaganda purposes. With the increase of Stalinist repression, especially after the assassination of Sergei Kirov in December 1934, he was placed under house arrest. Two years later after the sudden death of his son, he also suspiciously died at the age of 68. It is believed that he was killed by agents of Stalin.

141 lunar years ago, on this day in 1299 AH, Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Sadr od-Din Sadr was born in holy Kazemayn in Iraq. Son of Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Ismail Sadr and grandson of Grand Ayatollah Sadr od-Din bin Saleh after whom the Sadr Family of well-known scholars is named, at the age of 29 he enrolled at the famous seminary of holy Najaf to complete higher religious studies under such prominent ulema as Akhound Khorasani, Ayatollah Seyyed Kazem Yazdi, and Ayatollah Mirza Hussain Na’ini. He then moved to holy Mashhad in Iran where he married the daughter of Grand Ayatollah Hussain Qomi and stayed for 6 years, before settling in holy Qom at the invitation of Ayatollah Shaikh Abdul-Karim Ha’eri, the Reviver of the Qom Seminary. He later became Head of the Qom Seminary, and among his books mention could be made of “Khulasat al-Fosoul” and Annotation (Hashiya) on the “al-Kifaya”. His son was the renowned scholar Imam Musa Sadr who uplifted the social, economic and political conditions of the Shi’a Muslims of Lebanon, before being treacherously martyred by Libya’s military dictator Mo’ammar Qadhafi at whose official invitation he was visiting Tripoli. The Sadr family, whose ancestor had migrated to Iran from the Jabal Amel region, has produced numerous Islamic scholars in Iran, Lebanon, and Iraq, including Martyr Ayatollah Seyyed Mohammad Baqer Sadr of Najaf. Grand Ayatollah Sadr od-Din Sadr passed away in Qom at the age of 74 years.     

80 solar years ago, on this day in 1939 AD, towards the end of the two-years-eight month long Spanish Civil War, the monarchists led by Generalissimo Francisco Franco and supported by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, seized the capital, Madrid, thereby effectively ending the Second Spanish Republic established in 1931 following the expulsion of King Alfonso XIII to Italy. Four days later on April 1, the Republicans formally surrendered to Franco, who took power as regent and ruled as virtual dictator for the next 36 years until his death in 1975, having chosen Juan Carlos, the grandson of Alfonso XIII to succeed him as king.

78 solar years ago, on this day in 1941 AD, English writer, literary critic and one of the foremost modernists of the twentieth century, Virginia Woolf, committed suicide at the age of 59 by throwing herself into the River Ouse near her home in Sussex, Britain. Her body was never found. She was a significant figure in London literary society and a central figure in the influential Bloomsbury Group of intellectuals. Her most famous works include the novels “Mrs Dalloway”, “To the Lighthouse” and “Orlando”, and the book-length essay “A Room of One's Own”.

40 solar years ago, on this day in 1979 AD, a nuclear accident occurred at Unit 2 of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, USA. Caused by human and mechanical errors, a cooling system malfunctioned and permitted a partial meltdown of the reactor's core. Efforts to re-establish cooling of the reactor took several days. Over 100,000 people fled the area, as radioactivity leaked into the air. It was the worst US nuclear accident. On 21 July 1982, a video camera inspected the damage to the core and revealed a large amount of uranium had spilled and melted to the bottom of the pressure vessel. The US is the world’s most dangerously armed nuclear power with over 110, mostly weapons-producing nuclear plants, whose safety standards are under question since no inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) are allowed.

21 solar years ago, on this day in 1998 AD, prominent jurisprudent, Ayatollah Seyyed Jawad Hussaini Aal-e Ali Shahroudi, passed away at the age of 69 and was laid to rest in Qom in the holy mausoleum of Hazrat Fatema al-Ma’soumah (SA). Born in holy Najaf, he started his studies under his scholarly father and later attended the classes of leading jurisprudents, especially Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Abu’l-Qasem Khoie, and Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Mahmoud Shahroudi, whose daughter he married. In 1975, following pressures on Iranians by the repressive Ba’th minority regime of Baghdad, he migrated to Kuwait, where he continued his religious and welfare activities. In 1991, following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, he moved to Tehran, and the next year tragedy struck his household when Saddam imprisoned, tortured, and martyred his eldest son, Seyyed Hassan Shahroudi, his son-in-law, Seyyed Habib Hussainiyan, and two grandsons (daughter’s sons), Seyyed Mohammad Kazem Hussainiyan and Seyyed Mohammad Baqer Hussainiyan. Nonetheless, Ayatollah Seyyed Jawad Shahroudi continued his religious and welfare activities in Iran and built in Tehran the technologically advanced Payambaraan Hospital. He groomed scholars and wrote several books including “Imam Mahdi (AS) and his Reappearance”, and “Man through the Six Stages of Life” that starts with the soul created by God and its passing through the loins of the father, the womb of the mother, birth, death and the intermediary period called Barzakh, and finally resurrection on the Day of Judgement for reward of paradise or punishment of hell.

9 lunar years ago, on this day in 1431 AH, the prominent Islamic scholar and Source of Emulation in Lebanon, Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Mohammad Hussain Fazlollah, passed away at the age of 77. Born in the holy Iraqi city of Najaf, in Iraq in a Lebanese religious family, he studied under prominent ulema, including Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Mohsin al-Hakeem, Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Abu’l-Qasem Khoi, and Ayatollah Sadra Baad-Koubaee. He spent six years writing articles and compiling books and played a major role in reclaiming the denied rights of Shi'ite Muslims in Lebanon. He was a firm supporter of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Islamic Resistance Movement of Lebanon against Israeli occupation. He was the target of several assassination attempts by the Americans. He has left behind valuable books, including a 25-volume Exegesis of the Holy Qur'an.

AS/SS